In our 76th First Draft Friday, I was joined by historical romance author Audrey Harrison. (Audrey is a founding author of Authors A.I.) We talked about her journey as a writer and her process for researching and writing historical fiction.
Here are some key takeaways from my conversation with Audrey:
- Follow your passion: Audrey always had a deep interest in history and a desire to write historical romance novels, despite initial discouragement from an editor who claimed there was no market for such stories. She followed her passion anyway and found success when she self-published her first historical romance novel.
- Know your genre: Before diving into writing historical romance, Audrey immersed herself in the genre as a reader. Working in a library allowed her to check out a lot of books at once!
- Research is key: Audrey collects a vast array of historical books, including diaries and reference materials, to ensure accuracy in her storytelling. Two reference books she loves are The A-Z of Regency London 1819 and Cant – A Gentleman’s Guide: The Language of Rogues in Georgian London.
- Embrace the process: She allows herself to be led by inspiration and dives down “rabbit holes” of research, often spending hours on a single detail to enhance the realism of her narrative.
- Love of learning: Audrey’s background in history and psychology informs her writing process. She credits her psychology degree with instilling discipline, which helps her maintain a consistent writing schedule despite occasional bouts of writer’s block.
- Overcoming doubt: Despite her success, Audrey admits to struggling with imposter syndrome and self-doubt. She finds support from family and friends invaluable during times of uncertainty.
It was a great discussion, one you won’t want to miss! Click below to watch our 30-minute session and hear the questions we answered from the live audience. Keep scrolling if you’d prefer to read the transcript.
More info:
Try out Marlowe, our A.I., for a critique of your novel: authors.ai/marlowe/
Check out Audrey Harrison’s books on BingeBooks.
Enjoy the show? Check out our past First Draft Friday episodes.
TRANSCRIPT:
Alessandra Torre: Hello and welcome to First Draft Friday. This is episode number 76. I am so excited. I’m your host Alessandra today with Authors A.I. and I am joined today by the lovely Audrey Harrison, who is a bestselling historical romance author. And we are going to be talking about how you can, first of all, perform historical research on your books and then how to implement that in the story. So welcome, Audrey. We’re so excited to have you here. Do you want to just tell us a little bit about yourself?
Audrey Harrison: I’m Audrey Harrison, I’m from the UK. I live in a town in the northwest of England, halfway between Manchester and Liverpool. My background was public sector. But, in 2011, I published my first independently published novel and the rest is history. And nearly 40 historical romances later, I’m still loving it, still get a real buzz every time a book is published, and just grateful that readers seem to enjoy my stories.
Alessandra Torre: I love that. I was going to ask how many you’ve written and when you wrote your first book, did you know from the beginning that you wanted to write historical romance, and if so, what led you to the time frame of historical romance that you picked?
Audrey Harrison: I wanted to write. I’ve always been interested in history, from being a tiny tot. I’ve always wanted to write historical romance. But I actually submitted initially to an editor and she came back and went, no, there’s no market. It’s not a story that people publish, blah blah blah. So I published my first two novels – they weren’t historical. They were more modern. And then I sold a few, and it wasn’t very much. And I don’t think my heart was in it as much as anything. And then in the background, this little novel that I’ve written was niggling away. And, I thought, oh, well, just put it out there and see what and it literally took off. It was just unbelievable. It was number two in the U.S. It was number one in the UK. And I sat there going, they’re going to come knocking on my door saying we got the figures wrong. It was just unbelievable. And, it just proved to me that sometimes the gatekeepers in the publishing world haven’t always got it right.
Alessandra Torre: I love that story. A lot of times if the first novel is a breakaway hit, we don’t really appreciate it as much. It also kind of underlines that this is where you belong and this is your niche. So, I asked you part of this, but you said you write Regency. What is Regency? Forgive me for not knowing, but what time frame specifically is Regency historical romance?
Audrey Harrison: It can vary with different historians. Purely Regency is 1810 to 1820, but, basically, you’re okay south of 1800 to 1827. But, mine do tend to be in the 1810 to 1820 period. Because I love the fashion and I love the society at that time. What was big and what wasn’t big. So, I just write about what I love really.
Alessandra Torre: And did you read you in that genre a lot before you started writing in it?
Audrey Harrison: Yes. My first job was working in a library after I left school. And, unfortunately for the library, you could take out as many books as you wanted as a worker. So I did. I mean, I’ve always read, but working in the library was just fantastic for me. And then, I discovered Georgette Heyer. First of all, I fell in love. Completely fell in love. That was it. The switch had been flipped.
Alessandra Torre: Being a reader in that genre probably helped in terms of what you already knew, like what clothing was referred to as. You already understood communications in that time frame. Transportation. I mean, I would think just consistently reading in a certain genre is an education in itself, even if it’s not nonfiction. Even if it is fiction. Did you already kind of come into writing historical regency with a pretty good background?
Audrey Harrison: Quite a good background, because, as well as obsessively reading books, I obsessively buy books as well. My family groan every time we walk past the bookshop and it’s like, “No, Mum! Come out” you know? And, but I’ve got about 400 dash books that I can tap into research. That’s a lot of the diaries that have been produced of people, from the era or just slightly before or slightly afterwards. Because again, you just get a feel of society. I mean, I’ve got one which is the diary of a governess and it’s hilarious because it’s so boring. Every day she says about the children being well, but of course, that was important to her. When you’re on the 150th page, you go, “I don’t care if they are well, give me some gossip. What’s happening?”
Audrey Harrison: Yeah. So it can, I mean, even about the food and one particular thing. I love to show it because I love this book. This is The A-Z of Regency London. But it’s basically a street map of London and the streets, and I just absolutely love that, because I can plot where my families have gone to live. And, you know, for me, I’m a complete pantser when it comes to writing stories. I don’t plan. I’ll get an idea about something and then just run with that. But with research I’m just down a hundred rabbit holes and just having a whale of a time. And then one line will get added into the book. Three hours of research, you know, so to put that one line just helps to make the story real.
Alessandra Torre: Do you think as an author, you need to love research if you’re going to write historical? I mean, do you think that that needs to be kind of a good fit?
Audrey Harrison: I think so, yeah. I would certainly say so in my case because you spend so many hours researching that even to the point that you’ll type a word and then you’ll think, “When was that word first used?” And the amount of words I will go and search and it’ll say like, first you used 1863 in America and you go, “I can’t use it!” I think if you’ve not got the patience and commitment to sort of correct. Make sure everything’s correct as much as you can. I’m not saying I’m perfect by any stretch that I’ll leave to Georgette Heyer because she had absolutely a library full of research. But I think you need to enjoy it. And it is the bit I get both out of as well. It is good fun.
Alessandra Torre: That makes perfect sense. And I think probably that’s why I, as an author, have avoided writing historical. I mean, because I hate history. That’s so bad, but I know me and I know that for me, it would be overwhelming–the learning curve. So I think it does help if we do what we love. That would be really hard for me. But it was interesting because when you were talking about the governess and her diary and her thinking. It’s not just that you’re researching a time period, understanding the clothes and the technology and the different classes, but also just the mindset of people. If a man approached a woman in a certain way, how would she react and how would she think about that? Things that we do without thought nowadays might be a grievous error in that time frame and vice versa. So how do you get into the head of characters who lived back then? And do you have any tips for fellow authors in really understanding the mindset of characters, how they would react and think about certain things?
Audrey Harrison: I think, again, it goes back to reading diaries and the like. My books are pretty clean, so there’s not a lot of spice in them. Mainly because when I started writing, I knew my nieces were going to be reading them, and they were only early teens, and I couldn’t I couldn’t make them more spicy. But, the diaries right there actually shocked me when I first started researching and reading them because they’re a lot more spicy than we would give them credit for. We think back, it’s the Victorians that put all the morals on everybody and closed everything down. But the Georgians were just <raunchy?>. There is within the sort of the perfect society that was very restrictive. But you don’t have to scratch very far under the surface to find a lot of debauchery and all sorts of stuff. So it’s interesting. It’s getting a balance of keeping a fictional world, but also hinting at a sort of the real world, if you like. So, I mean, that’s what you have bad guys for, isn’t it? They can be the real side of history. It’s interesting what you said about having a steep learning curve if you went back to write history, because a couple of years ago, I did a trilogy, actually based on real stories from my husband’s ancestors. Fascinating stories. And for years I resisted writing them. One of the reasons was they were Victorian, and it’s sort of 1846, and I wasn’t as confident in writing the clothing and the restrictions because in 20 odd years things change. When we look back 20 years it’s a massive difference. And so that took me a long time, even though you would think, oh, a historical novelist is fine. So I’ve said, I’m not doing any more Victorian.
Alessandra Torre: I would have thought the same thing. That shows ignorance. Or I’d be like what’s 20 years? You know, we’re talking about going back 200 years. But it does. When you look in the 80s versus the 2000s, it is very, very different. But also it’s historical events that happened during then and, depending on your location, whether or not that area was engaged in a war or something else. Are all of your books in the same area or town?
Audrey Harrison: No. I do have a bit of an obsession with Bath. If I could afford it, I would live in Bath, but it’s in the south of England, and the difference between the north and the south is huge. Quite a few of my stories do take place or part of it takes place there. But, there’s been London because obviously, London was the center of the universe where society was concerned. But also I have taken stories abroad. One was in Portugal and sort of linked in with the Peninsular Wars that were going on around that time. I really enjoyed writing about that again because it’s a whole new aspect of it for me and the reader. I spent two weeks traveling around Spain and Portugal and it was great. It was absolutely great to see all the battle sites and everything. Again, only a fraction of that goes into the book. But there’s no saying that in the future it wouldn’t appear again in a different story.
Alessandra Torre: Yeah. Like when you had said earlier, three hours for one line. But maybe it brought ideas. Do you get ideas as you do research? Does it spur different ideas of scenes or of plot lines?
Audrey Harrison: Yes! Yeah. There is usually something that triggers. One time, again a few years ago, we went to the Foundling Hospital in London. And when I was going there it was just curiosity, you know. I know it started in the Regency times. Well, in the Georgian times. Then was as going during the Regency. And as I was walking around it was “This has to appear in a story. I have to do a story around this.” And I actually did two. So it was just going round and reading about it, and it was like, “This has to appear in the book. I have to tell this story.” So, yeah. And it can just be a little flicker, as my husband, longsuffering, always says when we go visiting everybody. “What section of the Regency has this got to do with it?” I go, “Nothin’.” And he says, “I don’t believe you.”
Alessandra Torre: There’s no way you’re just innocently picking this location here! Do you find that there are more opportunities in that time frame for stories versus a modern? For example, it seems like back then…I write mostly suspense now, so I’m always thinking about murders and that sort of thing. But I’m always like, “Oh, man, it would’ve been so easy to kill somebody and get away with it, like in the 1800s.” I’m curious if you find yourself hitting certain roadblocks from that time period, or does it typically almost help you out in creating missed connections or miscommunications that could cause conflicts? Is it on your side or is it often the opposite?
Audrey Harrison: It’s often the opposite, because if you get illnesses, of course, in the story, very often you want them to recover. But in real life they would have died.
Alessandra Torre: Because you have a small illness.
Audrey Harrison: Yeah I know. So again, you’ve done research. I know one day my husband was looking over my shoulder and he was like, “What are you looking at that for?!” And it was sort of head injuries that won’t kill you. I think he thought I was going to do him in. One of my books that I’ve got is from the ’80s, that of poisons. And so, so again, you’ve got to look really closely. Yeah. I mean, it’s fascinating. I could become a herbalist if the books stopped selling. I could become a herbalist with everything that I know. But again, it’s so fascinating, even though it’s not necessarily specific to the genre. It’s a lot wider, but you need to know what they were doing at that time. Yeah. It’s even to the point of one book involves a shipwreck and on an island, and I had to find out what animal could bite that they wouldn’t necessarily notice, but could cause a major illness, you know, It is hilarious. It is great fun!
Alessandra Torre: I love that. Oh my god. And like you said, illnesses. I wouldn’t even think about it. And childbirth I would think was also a really dangerous thing.
Audrey Harrison: Very dangerous. And, in fact, in one of the diaries that I have read, a woman was a captain’s wife, and she gave birth to a stillborn in the morning and then had a dinner party in the evening. And you just think that is beyond any comprehension of how we would be even after childbirth. But the fact that she’s not grieving for the child is …
Alessandra Torre: It was a hard life, I guess.
Audrey Harrison: Yeah. You were very fortunate if you had a large family and they all survived. So it was more normal for it not to survive. You hear of women losing quite a few, and you just think. And they just get on with it. The mind boggles what they must’ve gone through. But, yeah, again, it’s another rabbit hole.
Alessandra Torre: We have two questions. I’ll show this one first from Diane. She wants to know, do you publish traditionally or have you self-published at any point? I know the answer to this, but …
Audrey Harrison: Yeah, I’ve self-published all but three of my novels. I did Regency murder mysteries. Three Regency murder mysteries with Dragon Blade Publishing last year. And I’m still self-publishing.
Alessandra Torre: OK. So this is interesting. So you started in self-publishing and you wrote 30 and self-published, I guess 30 books, something like that. And then you decided to switch horses, both with publishing and also with your genre and you wrote Regency mysteries?
Audrey Harrison: Yes. They gave me the freedom to pick which.. It was going to be Regency. We both agreed on that, but they gave me the freedom to pick which sort of subgenre of that. I love cozy mysteries. I absolutely love cozy mysteries. So for me, it was like, I want, I want to do it.
Alessandra Torre: Yeah, yeah.
Audrey Harrison: And it was good fun actually interweaving the mystery. Not brilliant when you are a pantser because you really do need to write down because I’m saying that in hindsight, because I really didn’t.
Alessandra Torre: I love that. Another question, this one from Linda. And this is a great question. On Facebook, she said, how do you research for dialogue?
Audrey Harrison: There are a few resources out there. I mean, one for that Georgette Heyer is brilliant. But there are also a few books. I’ve got one here. It’s called Cant – A Gentleman’s Guide: The Language of Rogues in Georgian London and that has all sorts of lots of words. And I’ve also got a huge book which has sailing terms and words. Google is okay up to a point, but I do think having a few books to back up that you can rely on a bit is really good. And again, if you get the diaries, you can see them through, because most of the diaries, even if the transcriber does as they were written. So it’s quite good. And punctuation is even worse than mine, which is saying something. I love my editor.
Alessandra Torre: Do you think it helps if you are English? I mean, if it was an author like me who was trying to write Regency in that area, and I’m also trying to kind of navigate the subtleties of British English versus American English. You already sound to me very dignified and like I could just transport you into the 1800s and change a couple of words and it would be good. Do you think that helps? I mean, you’re already naturally…
Audrey Harrison: I think it helps for, as a reader it can jolt me out of the story because you have blocks and sidewalks, but we don’t. We have pavements, you know, and so things like that. I always think it’s quite sad that it happens. I obviously write in English, British English and my readers know that. But I think the spelling isn’t as important as the phrases because, particularly Sidewalk Companion, you wouldn’t, you would never have got a sidewalk. And ‘gotten’ that is another thing. We don’t use ‘gotten.’ We use ‘got.’
Alessandra Torre: Having an editor who is, you know, from that area. Okay. We only have five minutes left, and we have a few more questions. So Phoebe’s question for you is, “What is your daily writing schedule and how do you keep going at times when you might feel low in confidence or inspiration?” So before you answer this, can you let us know how many books a year you write? Because I believe you’re very prolific..
Audrey Harrison: Last year I think I wrote six. This year I’ve decided I’m not writing as many as that because I didn’t do anything else other than write. But, in the morning I try and do admin and get that out the way. So it’s answering emails, doing a bit of social media and then sort of, just before lunchtime, I will go back over the last chapter that I’ve written and change that, because when you write it, you usually need to tweak it. Then in the afternoon, I’ll continue writing and get a few hours, sort of 5 or 6 hours writing. Depends where I’m up to in the story, really. I tend to do real long days writing if I’m coming to the end of the story. But, yeah. And then it can get ridiculous. They can get sort of 14 hours. And I have done on a regular basis, but that’s the way I work. If I want to get it down. If I get writer’s block, which is. Yeah, it happens, particularly when you don’t plot. And, I just leave the book and go and write something else completely different, a different story, and try and then just let that story take over really and eventually, if I get to a block, how can I get over this? Like the desert island with the insect that needed to bite. That was a block and that was a while. And I kept just leaving it and thinking, “How can I overcome this? How can I overcome it?” And then I started to research, when I thought, “Oh, insect bite. What would that do?” So so, yeah. So it’s just stepping back. When you say inspiration. It’s easier to come by than confidence. I have huge imposter syndrome. Anybody who knows me well will say the same. You know, I mean, “I can’t do this. You know, I need to find the proper job,” and all the rest of it is said. And before publication that gets even worse. So, luckily, family and friends know to just pat me on the head and go, yeah, yeah, yeah, we know. And, until I sort of come back and cook ham again.
Alessandra Torre: I love that. I think you have time for one more question. And this one is from Dianne on YouTube. And, she said, “Do you run or have any training?” I don’t know what run means. I don’t know if that’s a British term. But if, Diane, if you can give us a little more information and I don’t believe she means do you jog? But maybe she does, but I think she’s come back.
Audrey Harrison: Look at me. You know I don’t jog.
Alessandra Torre: But do you have any training in writing or are you self-taught?
Audrey Harrison: No. I hated school from the day I went till the day I left. It was the happiest day of my life when I left school. And I include that after having two children. And it still is the happiest day of my life. I burned my uniform in the back garden and never wanted anything to do with school again. But then I discovered that actually, you could study things that you wanted to. So I did history at night school. Psychology. And I ended up doing the psychology degree while I work full time. And I had two children under the age of five and a husband that worked shifts. It was great fun. It was. So, I think that psychology degree enabled me to be disciplined. And I think that is really important. And for me, I think the writing was always there under the surface. I have got a manuscript that I wrote at 16. It will never see the light of day.
Alessandra Torre: I understand Diane’s question now. She was asking if you run or give any training to fellow authors. Do you have any courses or train authors at all? I’m sorry I misunderstood that question, but I still think it was a really interesting answer.
Audrey Harrison: No is the short answer. I’ve mentored a few people who I’ve met through conferences and stuff, and I’m always happy to talk, as you probably can gather. But, I just never feel that I know enough if that makes sense to be able to put on a course. But feel free to if you have any questions or anything like that, feel free to get in touch with me through Facebook or my website, by all means. You’d be more than welcome.
Alessandra Torre: We have reached the end of the time. I just want to share a comment from Linda. She says, as a fellow Brit from Bognor Regis, I don’t know if I pronounced that correctly. Been lovely to see and hear you. Thank you so much.
Audrey Harrison: Oh thank you.
Alessandra Torre: And Phoebe also said, thank you so much. It’s been fantastic. So, so really thank you. Thank you for coming. And, if you’re watching and you want to discover her books and discover more about Audrey, her website is AudreyHarrison.Co.UK. And if they’ve never read you before and they’re interested in reading one of your books, what would you recommend that they start with?
Audrey Harrison: Oh, The Bluestocking’s Quest. It’s the first in the. I’m still working on the series. But each book is completely different with, what I think, a unique story about the Regency.
Alessandra Torre: I love that. Bluestocking’s Quest and her covers are beautiful. You’ll see when you go on her website and on Amazon. They’re really beautiful. I love the cover of that book, especially. So thank you so much. Thank you to everyone who joined us. I hope you all have a fantastic weekend. And again, this event was brought to you by Authors A.I. If you have not visited Authors A.I., we have a really cool artificial intelligence called Marlowe that is analytical. It can analyze your manuscript and give you helpful feedback. You can try out Marlowe for free. So, you can check out more at Authors A.I. So thank you so much, Audrey. Thank you to everybody who joined us live for your fantastic comments and questions. It was so great to chat with you guys. And we’ll be back in two weeks with another First Draft Friday.
